Ar Tonelico: Melody of the Messenger
by Univenon
Summary: Chris Dreger is a knight of the church. Not being a fan of Reyvetails, he lacks a partner. Unfortunately for him, that ends when he's assigned to look after an unknown Reyvetail by the name of Shay.  OC fiction. Takes place after the game.


**Impact**

_Great… Just great._

Chris stood by, halberd in hand and watching over the smoking crater as the men attempted to clear the square of debris. The crater was just as odd as everyone said it was, mainly because it was lacking whatever had made the crater in the first place. He could hear the muttering workers going on about it. It was bad enough without having landed in the middle of Nemo.

There wasn't much for him to do other than stand there and stare at the men working. He had good hearing at least, so he listened in on the conversations that floated by with the passing citizens. He heard some of them saying that they had seen something fall from the sky and make the crater. Whether any of the accounts were actually true, was up in the air. Especially since whatever fell from the sky was missing. Some people insisted that it was song magic, that some rogue Reyvetail had caused the commotion.

That, of course, was also possible. If that were to be the case, then it would be up to the Church or Tenba to take care of it. He personally hoped that the Church would get there first. Sure, Tenba treated their Reyvetails with more respect than they used too, but that didn't say much and Chris had failed to see this first hand as of yet.

Chris Dreger cleared his throat and shook his shoulders. His heavy, white plated armor clanked loudly and many a passerby looked at him curiously, as if they had just noticed him. He nodded to them in recognition. They nodded back politely in respect for his status as a member of the Church.

A series of loud crashes and bangs erupted from the alley behind him. He jumped, standing straighter somehow. He slowly looked over his shoulder into the alley as he heard a vehement string of curses from the shadows.

"Damnit! Ow… Fuck me… That piece of shit got me good…"

Chris turned slowly on the spot and peered into the shadowed alleyway. He could see a figure there, but he couldn't make much out other than the already obvious fact that it was a person.

"Hello?" he called. The voice went silent. Chris could hear rustling sounds and a few more small crashes. He cautiously took a step into the shadows. Peering around a stack of crates, he found someone hunched over in the alley. They stood up strait. Chris's eyes narrowed, spotting blood on their clothes.

"Umm… Hi," they said, taking a step forward, out of the shadows. It was a woman. She was tall, slender and… he had to admit, rather well endowed, but he realized that her chest was not where he should be looking by any means. Forcing his eyes to her face, he noticed the short, rather messy black hair and, oddly enough, an eye patch. Her clothes were oddly big for her, black and baggy with seemingly countless pockets.

The blood he had seen was on the ground at her feet, as well as on her face and hands. He could see bits of it around the tears in her shirt and pants.

"Are you… alright?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she replied.

"But you look… injured?" he said. He hadn't been expecting that response from a woman, in a small pool of blood, in a back alley of Nemo.

"Huh? Oh… Yeah. Would you prefer 'I'll be fine' then?" she asked.

"But… Miss… You're obviously bleeding a lot. Maybe I could get someone to give you a look over. Were you caught in the accident?"

"Wait, wait, wait! What the hell are you…?" The woman stopped, groaning as she staggered forward, falling limp in his arms.

Chris sighed. "Great. Just… great…"

Chris found himself sitting next to the woman's bed some time later. The commotion he had caused by carrying her beaten form out of the alley had lasted for some time, yet no one at the scene had recognized the woman. In fact, despite the fact that Chris had grown up as a knight of the church, he had never even caught a glimpse of anything like this woman.

He sighed, rubbing his hazel eyes with his palms and running his fingers through the bangs of his short brown hair.

He didn't want to watch over this woman. Of course, being told that she was, in fact, a Reyvetail didn't help him either. He never liked Reyvetails. Fighting monsters was hard enough when you didn't have to baby-sit someone who was too busy singing to actually fight anything. He couldn't deny their usefulness but… they just didn't fit him so well.

He looked around the room, examining it out of boredom. It was a simple room. The only real furniture was the bed, a small table and the simple chair that he currently occupied. The table was empty, save for the pen and paper that he, himself had put there.

That was the reason he was in the room to begin with. It certainly wasn't out of concern for this woman. He didn't really care about her in the slightest. Any interest he had in her was more out of curiosity than anything else.

He heard a groan.

He lowered his hands in time to see the woman stir in her sleep. She opened her eyes, though it looked like it took some effort on her part. She pushed herself up into a sitting position. As the blanket fell away, he was suddenly very glad that the healers had redressed her. She rubbed her eyes, but stopped, her hands on her eyes. She lowered one, looking over at him, but keeping the left eye covered.

"Where's my…"

Chris held up the eye patch she had been wearing. He wondered why she needed it. Her eye had looked fine to him, other than it being an odd color. Maybe it was simply blind. She took it and slipped it on, wrapping it around her head and rearranging her short hair around it. The woman looked down at herself, taking a deep breath. She looked back at him.

"So… Umm… Who are you?" she asked. Her voice was suddenly higher pitched. It grated on Chris's brain and he winced.

"My name's Chris. What happened to your voice?" he asked, not making much effort to sound friendly.

"What do you mean?" she asked, again, using that forced voice.

"You sounded normal before, now you just sound like a Nyuu. Would you mind cutting it out?"

The woman sighed. "S-sorry. Can't hear my own voice right is all."

Chris blinked. "Why would something like that matter?"

"Ahh… It's nothing." She waved her hands frantically. "Really! So… Your name's Chris? You have a last name?"

"Dreger. Chris Dreger, knight of the church."

"Right…" she said, sounding confused. "Well, my name is Shay."

"Umm… Nice to meet you I guess. Mind if I ask you a few questions then?" he asked, remembering the duty he was charged with if the woman were to wake up.

"Sure. Go for it."

"First off, what's your full name?"

"Shay Fawks."

"Great," said Chris, sounding rather uninterested as he wrote short notes on her answers. "Where are you from?"

"I… don't remember?" she said, ending in a strange questioning tone.

"Okay… Do you know how you ended up in that alley?" he asked.

"I… got caught in an explosion. The one that left the big crater." She seemed to be more interested in looking around the room than looking at him.

_Great. She has a short attention span too,_ he thought, doing his best not to sigh outwardly. "Did you see what made the explosion?"

Shay hesitated. Chris was having trouble reading her expression, as she appeared to carefully consider her answer.

"There was something, a monster. It fell out of the sky and hit the city. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time I suppose," she said finally.

Though it sounded unlikely, Chris realized that it wasn't impossible. It could be possible for something that big to come down from the Blastline. What made him doubt the story more was the way Shay had hesitated before answering. Even if it was a true story, he had the feeling that there was more to it than what she was telling.

"Alright. Since you seem to have forgotten where you are from, are there any other holes in your memory?" he asked. Shay looked thoughtful.

"Well… I think there are a lot," she said with a nervous laugh. Chris just stared at her with a raised eyebrow. "What?"

"You don't seem very distressed over the idea," he said. Shay sighed.

"This happens to me from time to time. It's just frustrating having to learn everything from scratch."

Chris had the sudden feeling that this was the first honest thing she had said all day. Not only that, but it was the first time he felt he could sympathize with her. It also explained her confusion over what seemed to him to be simple concepts.

"Do you know any song magic?" asked Chris. He quickly took the blank look on her face as a "no". "Do you even know what song magic is?" Shay shook her head.

"Nope. Not a clue. Though I imagine it has something to do with songs and magic."

Chris covered his face in his hands. "I never thought that I would meet a Reyvetail who couldn't even cast song magic…" He looked up just in time to see yet another confused look on Shay's face. "Reyvetails are the ones who craft and cast song magic…" he added before she could ask.

"Okay. Got that. Thanks for the info." Shay swung her legs over the edge of the bed and pushed herself off.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said Chris simply.

"Why? What do you…" Shay stopped mid-sentence as she swayed, unsteady on her feet. She fell forward onto one knee, her eyes tight shut.

"You said you were 'fine' in the alley, but you had a pretty nasty wound. I don't expect you'll be moving around right off the bat, even with song magic to help you," he said. Shay crawled back into the bed. She didn't seem to expect his help, which was good because he wasn't in the mood to give it. Shay sat in the bed, one hand on her stomach. She looked to be in pain, but even so she refused to lie down.

"I can't just sit here…" she muttered.

"Why's that? You have some place to be?"

"Not really, it's just that…" Shay paused, looking at him. "When I sit around, things tend to go very wrong."

Another honest statement. Chris felt uneasy. There was something very important she wasn't saying, but he doubted that he would be the one to get it out of her. He sighed, pushing himself out of his chair.

"Leaving already?" asked Shay.

"Yes. I was only here to ask you questions if you woke up. I've done that, so my job's done."

"Well, what the hell am I supposed to do?"

"Heal, I would think. Do us a favor and don't make it any harder by trying to get up again."


End file.
